


With Whom Fate Brings You.

by withoutwords



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Canon Divergent, First Time, Future Fic, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:18:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutwords/pseuds/withoutwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny weighs his options.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Whom Fate Brings You.

**Author's Note:**

> This is set somewhere after Cath leaving, but her method of departure does not exist in this ‘verse. Other things may differ from S4 and 5 too.

It’s a funny story. A SEAL meets a Detective and the Detective gets shot. The Detective punches the SEAL and maybe they fall in love or something, because later, when the Detective gets shot again, this time there’s not a punch, but a kiss like one. Fast and hard and leaving them breathless, dizzy and unsure. 

“Shit,” Steve hisses, and it skitters up the hallway, into the next room, out to where everyone is waiting. “Shit, Danny, I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Danny says, and it’s mostly coughing, his hand pressed to where he is sure a bruise is already blooming. A place right near his heart.

“I thought you were - ”

“I’m not.”

Danny throws the vest aside – bullets and all – blood thumpthumping in his veins. Kono calls out for them, and it seems so far away. He didn’t lose his life but Steve took something he’ll never get back, anyway. He changed the game.

“We should go.”

*

There’s this thing called calculated risk. Danny was well versed in it before Five-0, before Steve McGarrett and his obvious disinterest in mathematics. Calculated risk: if you mess up you’re going to lose this, and this, and _are you sure you want that you stupid, flat foot schmuck?_

Well.

Danny has a photo of Grace, Steve and himself, framed and hung up on the wall. He has about three pair of Steve’s abandoned flip flops, an old shirt, and something that he can’t identify, what not being a Navy SEAL or overly familiar with covert weaponry. He also keeps the bracelet Grace made for Steve with flowers and dolphins, a beaded thing that Steve wore non-stop for three months and will still wear on occasion if she asks or if “it goes with my outfit, Danny, what’s your damage?” 

Steve brings Danny coffee, the way he likes it, brings tools to fix things at the apartment so Danny won’t fail an inspection. He grills meat and buys beer and takes Grace into the ocean because Danny hates it. He doesn’t hate that she’s out there with him, splashing and laughing and holding her breath just long enough for Danny to freak out.

Short of his total lack of self preservation and the way he leaves wet towels everywhere, Steve is sort of perfect for him. 

Which is madness, like Hamlet, like _therein lies the rub_. 

*

Danny ought to be clever enough to let this go. Steve asks, “How’s the shoulder?”, and Danny says, “I’m fine, Steven,” and that’s just him. The little glint in Steve’s eye and the pandering, Danny knows. 

They work a case, have food with Chin and Kono, joke about a perp; Danny; the HPD; Danny. It’s normal. Except Danny’s skin itches and his heart does a little lilt every time Steve’s hands press against his thigh. Danny wonders.

“Did you ever think Steve and I were fucking?” he asks Gabby when she calls. Her choked off laugh is caught between surprise and mockery.

“I _fantasised_ about you and Steve, is that the same?”

“You can’t do that! How can you – you’re supposed to resent anyone who touches me.”

“Maybe,” Gabby says, and Danny can hear, _maybe that’s why it didn’t work out_. “Are you thinking about you and Steve fucking?”

“Yes,” Danny says, but the way she says it, fucking, it sounds like something he pays to watch sometimes, when he can’t sleep and his dick isn’t co-operating. “No,” he amends. “I’m thinking about Steve and I. Together.”

Gabby’s quiet for a moment, taking a breath. 

“Aren’t you always together?”

*

They’re drinking beer again and it’s as good a time as any.

“Here’s the thing,” Danny says, ignoring how Steve’s groan sounds like, _great, Danny’s going to start talking again_. “In my first few months here, with you, I thought about sex. With you.”

Every muscle in every part of Steve tenses like wire. Strung up. “Jesus, Danny,”

“Possibly a few dozen times since then,” Danny goes on, gaining speed. “Usually when you’re in a state of undress or you’re beating the crap out of some scumbag with a fondness for selling drugs, or girls, or … _whatever_ I don’t want to get into the complete Freudian bat-shit insanity that entails, just. I thought about it.” 

“Is this about the kiss?”

“Is this – yes! You imbecile. It’s about the kiss and every other thing that led me to this point that I can’t move past, Steve, and I’m sorry but I can’t move past it.”

“I love you,” Steve says, and he’s said it before but it makes Danny still nonetheless. “After all this time, through everyone and everything and all the bad shit, I’ve had you. Who do I go to if it goes bad?”

“You come to me.”

Steve gets up and starts pacing. All things considered it’s probably overdue. “Danny - ”

“See, this is what happened with Rachel. We dug so deep into our own anger that when we finally faced it she roared, I roared. It was like Jurassic Park 3D back there, it wasn’t pretty.”

“Dinosaurs?”

“Tale as old as time, babe.”

Steve’s still pacing. He has his good hand on his hip and he’s shaking his head and it’s funny how Danny reads him like an anatomy chart. This bone here means, daddy issues, this valve here means, this suckers broken so many ways you’re never getting it back in one piece.

“Do you want it in writing?” Danny tries, sinking into the couch. “I, Daniel Williams, solemnly swear that if I engage in sexual acts with one Steven. J. McGarrett and we decide we can no longer continue in this course of action, we can still be best friends forever afterward, signed - ”

“You’re joking right now.”

“Do you think that I would do that? _Joke_ with you?”

Steve looks out to the lanai then back to Danny, clipped.

“I think I need some air. Can you be gone when I get back?”

*

This is how they’re different. Steve goes on like nothing’s changed and Danny seethes because he’s _right_. They bicker and laugh, swap lunch and share stories. Steve goes to Grace’s pep rally just because she asked, and talks to Rachel on the phone because Danny has a mouth full of puka dog, and no patience.

Danny’s face down in a pile of Milk Duds and struggling with his side arm; a shower of bullets flying overhead. Apparently Hawai’i forgot to send the memo out to its criminal populace: that it’s Sunday and it’s been a long fucking week. 

“Could you please remind me how a beer run dissolved into a shoot out?” Danny hisses, finally freeing his gun from its holster, elbow slipping on a rogue bag of Peanut M’n’Ms. “I mean, I was there for that, right? You said, your shout Danno, and I said, how’s this for shouting, and then all of a sudden you’re manhandling me onto the floor and some psychotic gunman is trying to kill me, right?”

“Us, Danny,” Steve whispers from above him. “The psychotic gunman is trying to kill _us_.”

Danny looks up. Trust Steve to be in some Navy-taught ninja crouch while Danny looks like a fat kid who’s belly flopped into a kiddie pool. “Us. Sure. We both know this guy is no expert. He’ll take one look at you and surrender himself along with every other miscreant he knows. Can we get this over with, already? I’d like to salvage what’s left of my only day off.”

“I’m sure the guy at the register will be really sorry he put you out.”

“You’re trying to be funny right now?”

“I love a good gag in the middle of combat,” Steve deadpans, eyes still on the job at hand. “Did I ever tell you the one about the lizard and the koala smoking pot?”

“Oh my God just go already, _please_.”

Steve goes, rounds the shelf with a hard left and miscalculates. When the bullet slices through his skin the perp seems to be more surprised than anyone. Danny growls, and lunges, and it’s not until Steve yells,

“Danny, I’m fine,” that he stops throwing punches.

The guy’s face is ground beef and Danny doesn’t feel any better.

*

Danny’s thumping angrily at the smart table, when Chin finds him. He can feel his hair falling out of place, a trickle of sweat down his spine. He throws his emotions around like breadcrumbs; he figures it was only a matter of time before someone followed the trail, anyway.

“Kamekona’s bringing Steve in later,” Chin says gently, putting his paperwork down as if any false move might make Danny explode. 

“Yeah, I know,” 

“He’s fine. I mean, it really was just a scratch.”

“A scratch?” Danny parrots. “Fifteen stitches and a fistful of the good drugs is a scratch?”

“He’s had a hell of a lot worse.”

“Oh, I know. I mean, we put together a secret operation to drag his ass out of North Korea. I got him off a cliff when he broke his arm and pulled bullets from the walls of his home. Hell, you and I had him exonerated and kept him _out of jail_.”

“Right. So what’s the problem? 

“The problem is there’s not a problem any more! I bitch and I moan and I tell him to stop doing it but I don’t actually care that he does. It’s who he is. I wouldn’t change it. Jesus, Chin, I wouldn’t change any of it. Grace, Hawai’i, Steve - ” 

Chin’s grinning now, and Danny wonders which of them has lost their marbles. “Hu’i hu’i, bruddah, I knew you’d realise it one day. I mean, you and the boss have been serious for how long?”

“Serious? Serious about what? You mean like an item?”

“You mean you’re not an item?”

Kono saunters in to see Danny and Chin staring at each other. She seems to question whether she should turn around and leave again, to and fro. “Uh. What did I miss?”

“Danny and Steve have never - ”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah,” Danny shouts, putting his hand up to silence him. Apparently she doesn’t need the rest of it, because she blinks a few times with her disbelief. 

“Seriously? Never?”

“Are you two done prying into my personal life, or should I get Rachel and Gabby in here to give you a recount of everything we got up to when the doors were closed.”

Kono pulls a face. “Not if we can avoid it, thanks.”

Danny locks the door when he gets into his office.

*

Danny’s the jealous type. Danny is a shirt wearing, green eyed, self proclaimed jealous man with _dibs_. There have been bar hoppers, pretty profilers, buff SEALS that call Steve _Smooth Dog_ and know all the classified places he has been. There have been hurdles, and obstacles and marriage material women who can probably kill Danny with a well placed finger to his jugular. 

On a Tuesday, Catherine comes back.

Danny loves her, loves her almost the same way he loves Kono; like the first time he saw her he thought about her beauty and by the time they were done talking he considered her family. He loves her but he’ll always resent what she means to Steve.

“We need to catch up,” Steve is saying to Danny, while Cath hovers near the door and pretends not to hear. Danny knows Steve is saying, _don’t get the wrong idea_ , but Danny had the wrong idea the minute Steve picked up his keys and said _Cath’s here_. The fact that they’re breathing the same air gives Danny ideas.

“Sure. Fine. Have a good time.”

Cath waves, unsure, as they’re leaving, the way she had done six months ago, after crying to Danny, “He’s only ever half there, he’s never … I never …”

Danny thought she meant because of Wo Fat, Shelburne and Doris, pieces like ceramic, fragile, and the half finished messy mosaic that is Steve’s life.

Except maybe she meant because of Danny.

*

Professor Clive Burns takes a lecture hall hostage the following week, with his unironed suit and messy comb over. Danny gets so bored listening to his pseudo-academic ramblings about the education system and what’s wrong with this generation; to the point he’s almost glad when Steve does some crazy ass stunt that leaves Burns unconscious.

“Casualties?” Steve asks rhetorically. As if that has ever been Danny’s _actual_ problem with Steve’s actions, the risk of _other_ people getting hurt. 

“The desk, the projector, that pointy thing you broke over his back, the - ”

“I’m starving,” Grace says as she comes into the kitchen, slumping onto the bench. They’re making popcorn and pigs in a blanket and ignoring the unimpressed look on Steve’s face.

“Movie ready?” Danny asks, slipping out from beside Steve and kissing Grace on the head. She’s still sandy after her surf with Steve, looks worn out and content the way she never does at Danny’s place.

“It was ready ten minutes ago but you two were fighting and - ”

“We weren’t fighting,”

“Right,” Steve agrees. “It was an argument.”

“You sound like Mom and Stan when Stan has been flirting with other women.”

The fast paced rate that Steve’s face flushes red is almost comical, reminds Danny of the time Max had asked him what fellatio was, because, “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with this term, Commander.” Which Danny never believed for a second. 

“Well, the foods just about done, you two go out and I’ll bring the rest.”

Danny listens to Grace try and explain the basic plot of the movie to Steve as he potters around, gets a bowl, and some plates, gets the tumblers out for their juice. He sniffs at his pits and wonders if he has time to change his t-shirt when Steve’s suddenly got him turned round and pressed against the bench and is just kissing him, kissing him like this hadn’t been an issue _just the other day_.

“What the hell,” Danny says on an exhale, revelling in the clutch of Steve’s hand in his hair, pulling at Steve’s collar for purchase. “Grace is - ”

“I know, sorry, I know,” Steve pants, kisses Danny once more and disappears.

*

Steve curls two, three fingers inside him, breath stuttering at Danny’s throat. The sheet curls rough around them and the fan whistles above their heads and Danny feels like his skin and his muscle and his bones are simmering, (is it warm or does it burn). Steve is right there, _right here_ , pushing in closer and Danny can feel the hard line of his cock so near so very nearly his.

“Do it, Steve, Jesus, just do it,” he manages to say, wrenched out like he’d been tortured into submission. 

“Danny, _fuck_ ,” Steve fumbles with the condom, has been fumbling a lot, and it’s nice to know he’s not perfect at everything, that he can stare down a man wearing a bomb but the sight of Danny naked makes his whole body stammer.

“Yes,” Danny hisses when Steve pushes inside him, yes, yes, because this is so right, this is what the risk is for. Steve inside Danny and Danny pulsing around Steve, this is what it’s for. 

The fingers he kept curled in Steve’s shirt all the way home from Korea; the hug that lingered a little longer when Danny was almost blown up; the static press of their lips in a dark hallway because Steve thought he was dead and wanted Danny to breathe the life back into him.

Together in every single way.

*

Steve takes Danny out to dinner, like a date, like a let me open the door for you and pull out your chair for you _date_. They eat Surf and Turf and drink beer and it’s exactly like every other night they’ve ever shared except Steve has his hand on Danny’s thigh and doesn’t banter with the waitress when she flirts with him.

Steve says, _I want to do it right_ , and Danny jokes, _but I already put out_ , and it dissolves into an argument for a while before Steve takes the training wheels off and says,

“Look,” as if he’s outlining a case. “When I saw Cath last week, I realised something. Something I –I’m not proud of.”

“Okay,” Danny says, taking the bait.

“I – I loved her. I cared about her a lot. But – but I had lived without her, and I had accepted that I could do it again. I was safe in that knowledge. You know?”

“I – maybe?”

“I don’t know what life without you is, Danny. Not for five years. I – I had no concept of family before you, and Grace, and Five-0. My dad was dead, my mum abandoned us, and Mary had sent me a few Christmas cards in ten years.”

“I get it, babe,” Danny says, entwining their fingers. “Exposure to loss. But don’t – you shouldn’t hold back from me. Don’t.”

“If I lose you - ”

“Are we going to think about that for the rest of our lives?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Okay. Fine,” Danny sighs, and lets it settle. “If I accept that you’re going to be a paranoid freak forever can you accept that I’m going to get angry with you for leaving wet towels around, forever?”

Steve smiles, crinkling at the eyes. He shakes his head, just a little, and says, “Sure, Danno,” kissing him briefly behind his ear. Then, just like he’d said it the night before, Danny shaking with it, pleading, he whispers, “Ku’uipo,”

and finally accepts his fate.


End file.
